Georgia

Geographic position

33.7489° N, 84.3881° W

Event

Fundraising Tour of Great Britain

Sources

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3729. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-579. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-585.

General note

Georgia, the last of the thirteen colonies to be established, is now a state located in the southeast region of the United States. A variety of Native American tribes lived in the Georgia area as far back as 13,000 years ago; they were prolific rock mound builders, producing structures like the Kolomoki Mounds that still survive today. When the Spanish arrived in the area in the mid-1500s, two of the largest Native American tribes in the region were the Creek and the Cherokee. In the mid-1600s, English settlers from South Carolina ventured into Georgia and engaged in the slave trade of Indians up until the early eighteenth century when the colonial economy turned to the deerskin trade. James Oglethorpe officially claimed Georgia in 1733 to serve as a buffer zone between the Spanish in Florida and South Carolina, naming it after King George II of England. Throughout the eighteenth century, Creek villages became a refuge for fugitive African slaves. In a letter to Wheelock in 1764, John Smith explains that he will send correspondence to George Whitefield, the English evangelist who is currently in or has recently left Georgia, regarding Occom’s recommendations for his fundraising tour in England.